Sensation
by AJ Hofacre
Summary: Rated PG-13 for semi-character death. I don't want to give anything away, but just imagine an AU season 7, where suddenly, Spike's demon becoems a little hard to handle...


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**Sensation**

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She moves quietly, all senses alert. She has to stay silent, move carefully. He can't know she's there.

Yet he's always aware. He spoke to her once, mentioned that he was always aware when she was around. It scares her. Still... she has to at least try.

Shifting slightly, her back against the wall, she creeps down the hallway. She is nearly desperate, and it is all she can do to keep calm, all she can do to keep her sanity.

She knows better. He was bound to have come after her eventually. Her body thrums with fear, aches from exhaustion, but thrives on adrenaline. It he comes after her within the next minute, she has enough tension inside her, coiled and ready to defend herself - at least long enough to keep him down so she can get away.

Her senses suddenly spring into action, giving her internal warning system the kind of notice that one wouldn't miss on a giant, flashing neon billboard. Her ears perk, her breathing slows, and she closes her eyes as she tries to discern...

He's about twenty feet away. Getting closer, and his footsteps echo. Three, two, one.

Here he comes.

He's deceptive. He can mold himself, look like an everyday human male. He plays on her emotions, her hormones, her own attractiveness. He comes to her with eyes of the softest, deepest blue, and hair as soft and flaxen as lamb's wool. He has skin that is white, ivory, smooth and yet hard all at once, and soft pale pink lips which curve alluringly, like Cupid's bow.

All in all, he is gorgeous. And he knows it, too.

His skin is ice cold. Yet when he touches her, it burns like fire.

She swore she wouldn't let him touch her again. So much for that pledge.

No. Not 'he.' It. She has to remember. It, not a 'he.' _**It**_ is an evil thing. Only a thing. Just an evil, disgusting **_thing_**.

An evilly beautiful, disgustingly appealing thing that has managed to sneak up on her.

He lunges. She hasn't realized that he'd been so close; and she hits the ground hard, a sharp pained whimper escaping her lips. The weight above her instantly disappears but as she rises and starts to gather her bearings, she is once again knocked to the ground. Now she is flipped onto her back, smacked in the face, and kicked once in her side, all in quick succession.

She moans softly in her pain, as he's actually managed to get the best of her for once. Yet she gets up like a shot the minute she hears the rumbling pantheric growl emanating from his chest.

When he comes at her again, she is ready. A quick snap-kick to his chest knocks him right across the room; it gives her time to get up, shake off the attack, and formulate a strategy.

Then he snarls angrily, and she thinks, "To hell with strategy!" and throws everything she has at him.

Just one small tap, with a whole lot of force, from something even as small as a toothpick, and -- poof.

He knows full well what is coming, but what he is unaware of is how. What he _**does**_ know is survival -- it is kill or be killed now. It goes against his nature to give up -- not that he can, given the control held over him, the complete decimation of any and all free will he carries.

Despite what she's always thought, what she's always accused him of, he doesn't want to kill her. The humanity left inside of him since his turning nearly a century and a half ago, and the adamant demonic energy that has taken over are in full agreement over this. But his free will is his no longer; his conscious mind has no say in what he can do. The demon essence controls his body, and it senses trouble; therefore he has to fight.

Yet with a sinking feeling, he knows at once that while neither could actually lose -- there wouldn't be a winner.

He stands slowly, eyes fixed only on her. She's lovely. He's known it for years; he's wanted her for so long. He understands now that the only way he can have her is in death.

So be it.

He lunges again, and this time, she dodges, then swipes her leg under him, knocking him down. He growls in frustration, catching her leg as it moves past him with both hands. He twists quickly, and she yelps as she spins horizontally in mid-air. She lands next to him on the cold sodden earth. He scrambles on top of her, slamming her head firmly onto the ground. Lowering his head, his canines extend, and he rumbles with pleasure as he feels, smells, the heat and aroma of her blood.

Until she head-butts him and knocks him off of her. This time she hurries onto him and pins him down. She reaches for a broken twig (a casualty from a tree branch that they managed to snap during their chase), and attempts to stab him with it; he deflects the blow, barely flinching when it buries itself in his shoulder.

He growls as she pulls back. Her lower lip is trembling as he sits up and slowly pulls the stick from his shoulder. She makes the mistake of catching his eyes, and suddenly, she can't get away. She can't move, she can't even think properly. All she can see is him. He is all she is aware of.

He pushes her gently onto her back. His hand reaches up, clearing her hair away from her neck. Her fear is making her blood pulse faster. Wonderful.

It will only taste that much sweeter.

She knew it would happen eventually. As he said once, all it would take was for just one of his kind to get a chance.

She's just grateful that if she has to go, it's by his hands, or rather, his teeth. All the others would put on airs, and mock her. He... he will be truth. He won't make promises he can't keep. And all the promises he has made, he has kept. For the most part.

His canines are poking into her neck, and he purrs blissfully. He is the hunter, the predator, that has finally captured his prey, and he revels in it. He bites down, and the gush of sweet, aromatic blood fill his mouth.

She fights with him to the very end, because that is what she is - a fighter. But like all fighters do, she eventually succumbs to the lull of his arms, his lips, his teeth, his mind. She looks up at him, gazes into the feral yellow eyes of his demon, and embraces it.

And when he holds his wrist to her lips, the lives of the innocents that he's stolen marring his flesh, she drinks. Her eyes close.

He has gained back enough of his equilibrium to know what act it is that he is committing. And he can't help but finish it now.

He closes his eyes in rapture as he sentences an Angel to suffer eternal damnation.

When she opens her eyes again, it's dark.

When she looks up, he is the first thing she sees.

On the ground is the body of a former friend, dark-haired, lovely, though knocked firmly unconscious.

The ache inside her body begins to thrum, and she crawls toward him, like a child, which in a way, she supposed, she was. He holds out his arms and she crawls into them, mewling happily as he envelopes her in a tender embrace. Pushing her hair back, as he did once before, he bends his head down to kiss the two tiny scars that marr her otherwise flawless skin, then nudges her away to face the girl on the ground. His hand on her back, he tugs her forward, and the thrumming inside her body increases when she realizes what it is.

Hunger.

She dives forward and wraps her arms around the girl, nuzzling her neck before revealing her own razor sharp incisors and biting. The girl, though unconscious, lets out a surprised gasp, and then is silent. The young fledgling listens intently as the human's heart slows, all the while feeding voraciously. And when the blood is no more, and the heart is silent, she turns to her master.

He smiles.

When his lips press to hers, she rejoices. It's a sensation unlike any she's ever known.

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